2023-08-17 18:17:00
Political news, at half mast during the summer holidays, will resume in a few days for a sequence that promises to be intense and uninterrupted until the June 2024 elections. It promises the return of a nagging question: the N-VA and the PS are they ready to govern together, and to begin an institutional reform?
”I am not opposed to a major institutional reform that will allow the Flemings to gain the autonomy they demand. In this case, it can be used for a great movement of economic redeployment of Brussels and Wallonia on the basis of a deep project of reindustrialization”, declared this Monday in L’Écho the socialist federal deputy Malik Ben Achour, at the forefront of the visa business.
VERVIERS. PORTRAIT OF MALIK BEN ACHOUR. Photo Michel Tonneau ©Tonneau Michel
This remark indeed somewhat contradicts that made by the president of the PS, in June 2022. On the eve of a congress of the socialist party, Paul Magnette had closed the door, denying all preparatory contacts with the N-VA, ensuring that a “seventh state reform in 2024 is neither necessary nor desirable”.
The exit of Malik Ben Achour raised a wind of optimism in the Flemish nationalist ranks. Some, at the N-VA and elsewhere, see it as a sign of a new opening of the Boulevard de l’Empereur. But that’s probably going a little too fast. The words of the Verviers deputy, held in the torpor of the holidays, were not concerted with the top of the party, where the time is not yet for political maneuvers but always for the holidays. The recovery will only really take place with the summer university in Mons, this September 2.
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The persistence of a regionalist fringe in the PS
However, these remarks indicate the persistence of a regionalist fringe within the PS which would rather see favorably the granting of additional powers and funds for Wallonia. They would see themselves using them for social purposes but also, therefore, for Walloon reindustrialisation.
Far from being negligible, this regionalist fringe includes Malik Ben Achour, but also municipalists like Nicolas Martin, mayor of Mons, the Walloon minister Christophe Collignon, the former president of the Walloon Parliament Jean-Claude Marcourt, or a heavyweight like Pierre -Yves Dermagne, Federal Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the Economy, while trade union voices, within the FGTB, also plead in this direction.
Paul Magnette himself, before his remarks in the spring, passed for a regionalist.
No one at the PS has forgotten that in July 2020, the president of the PS and Bart De Wever negotiated at length an agreement in which the socialists agreed to let go of the institutional ballast while the N-VA conceded massively on the socio-economic.
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Internally, some continue, even today, to think that the contours of this stillborn deal might once more constitute a good basis for discussion following the 2024 elections.
Arithmetic might impose N-VA on PS
The Socialists had punctuated the 2019 election campaign with their “never with the N-VA”. The deal may be different five years later. The polls predict Vlaams Belang first place in Flanders and arithmetic might impose “the lesser evil” on the PS, by governing with the N-VA.
The top of the PS is well aware of this reality. Even so, at the Boulevard de l’Empereur, no one wants to make the institutional a campaign theme. This would be very unhelpful when socio-economic issues appear to be priorities. “By his words, Paul Magnette also wants to avoid being locked up by his opponents who say that it is already written and that the PS will govern with the N-VA following 2024”, slips an elected socialist.
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Beyond the official speeches, where are the contacts between the PS and the N-VA today, one year before the elections?
“These are classic contacts in the context of parliamentary work. Without more”, loose a tenor of the PS.
An N-VA heavyweight sums it up.” There are still contacts between N-VA and PS, but it’s very discreet”.
Because everything is scrutinized. Peter De Roover, leader of the N-VA group in the Chamber, was seen leaving the offices on Boulevard de l’Empereur, where the socialist party has its headquarters. The PS denies having received it. “Don’t forget that Vooruit is also in these buildings”, we are told.
Priority, in one camp as in the other, is clearly not given to the preparatory discussions for 2024. There will still be time following the ballot, and undoubtedly a long period of settling, to begin more in-depth discussions. It is still necessary, first, to win the elections. At the PS as at the N-VA, it is very far from certain.
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